the edge of logic and intuition

I’ve been a user of Ubuntu Linux and other distributions for a number of years now and primarily work on a laptop. I finally got one of the ‘netbooks’ to use when out and about etc and chose the Acer Aspire One 531 model with Windows XP (there’s a new one out with Windows 7 and a higher capacity battery which also seems to be branded as 531 – mine is the more ‘basic’ one and cost £220 as of today). Not being a Windows enthusiast I know it’s possible to use Ubuntu or other distributions on a number of the netbooks so decided to try this today.

→ view the rest of the post: Experimenting: Acer Aspire One 531 (ZG8 / AO531h) and Ubuntu Linux

About 15 years ago I used to have a Polaroid instant camera (Vision 95 or something similar as I recall) – it’s long gone and in any case I probably wouldn’t be able to get film for it as the Polaroid instant cameras have been discontinued for quite a while, though the company Polaroid are still going and now sell digital photo related technology instead.

For a few months I’ve been looking into this again since although I use a digital camera mostly (HP Photosmart R717) I had a bit of a ‘retro’ phase and wanted to go back and try an instant camera again.

→ view the rest of the post: Experimenting: FujiFilm Instax Mini 7s

Alternative rock/post-grunge band from Southampton and Portsmouth (UK)

I have a copy of Lenore Thomson’s book Personality Type: An Owner’s Manual as part of my research on the MBTI personality type system (a broad subject and one I am going to write about separately at a later stage so I’ll just mention here that I was reading the book and leave it at that for now). I was already aware of my type (ENTP without any real doubt, though I used to test as INTP I’ve never truly been an introvert and realise that now!) so didn’t expect to find out anything really new from the personality test she included in an early chapter of the book, though it did corroborate the ENTP “diagnosis” which as far as it goes is good.

I was particularly struck by one of the questions though (which is intended to measure N (‘iNtuition’) vs S (sensing) preference) – all are in the ‘choose either A or B’ format. “A: My physical surroundings are important to me and affect how I feel. B: Atmosphere isn’t all that important to me if I like what I’m doing.” Answer A indicates towards a Sensing preference and B an iNuitive preference. Very strongly and almost viscerally I answered A (though in general, as a dominant iNtuitive type my responses to the rest of the N/S questions mostly reflected that) and I was surprised that this was so.

→ view the rest of the post: Returning to the origin: regaining the generative environment

Hard Fall Hearts from San Diego are a band I’ve started listening to relatively recently and actually heard of through the internets. (Another “local” band that’s not local to me!) This is actually quite difficult to categorise though it has elements of punk, rockabilly, psychobilly… similar in some parts to bands like Tiger Army. Actually I think there are some elements of ‘folk punk’ as well (am I the only person that sees the similarity between a lot of the stuff described as ‘folk punk’ and ‘psychobilly’?)

Some time ago I came across the Wordle site which takes a URL or some text as input and outputs a frequency map similar to the one below according to the frequency of different words in the text being queried. (There are various options such as colour, layout, ignore common words such as ‘and’, etc.) Some people also use Wordle to create images of text by directly specifying the words they want to appear in it (and with what frequency), for example to use as a graphical element on a T-shirt etc.

→ view the rest of the post: Writing style and personality analysis (1)

I come to in the middle of an arcade about halfway down the promenade of an amusement arcade in a seaside town I’m semi familiar with.

→ view the rest of the post: Disorientation at the arcade

A couple of weeks ago and after about 2 years of deliberation (!) I finally made the decision to purchase the Xbox 360 games console. Slightly behind the curve I know but previously I’d only really played PC games (this was back in the days when I used Windows, though) but it’s something I had been after for a while and it was only silly reasons stopping me buying one (gaming is now “trendy”, etc).

→ view the rest of the post: Regaining a sense of discovery

One of the things I’ve always been a bit afraid of is hypnosis (being hypnotised myself I mean, not just in general!) Something I wouldn’t do because of probably irrational fears about being irrevocably ‘changed’ somehow or unable to wake up from it etc. After last week’s lottery episode I watched Derren Brown again this week with his attempt to stick the audience to their seat using ’subliminal’ messages.

→ view the rest of the post: Open for hypnosis

In spite of myself I got drawn in and watched the Derren Brown programmes this week on predicting the National Lottery – Wednesday’s was a 10 minute show with him “predicting” the Lottery numbers for Wednesday’s draw (ostensibly before the draw but they were only revealed after) and then an hour’s programme yesterday explaining how he did it!

→ view the rest of the post: Predicting the lottery